


Into the Fire

by petrodactyl352



Series: Out of the Woods [2]
Category: Castlevania (Cartoon), 悪魔城ドラキュラ | Castlevania Series
Genre: A lot of sex, Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Carmilla is still a Bad Bitch™, Domestic Fluff, F/F, F/M, M/M, Manipulation, Multi, OT3, Politics, Season 3? Don't know her, Sex, So much fucking politics, Threesome - F/M/M, Time to put on our adult hats folks
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-19
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:15:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 13,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23215360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petrodactyl352/pseuds/petrodactyl352
Summary: It’s been three months since the last of the Belmont family’s secrets were buried along with their bloodstained inheritance. The days have been long and there has been peace, but perhaps peace is a barricade that is not meant to last. Secrets still shroud the freshly forged alliance between the hunters and the hunted, and one whisper could be what finally razes it all to the ground.--discontinued--
Relationships: Alucard | Adrian Tepes | Arikado Genya/Trevor Belmont/Sypha Belnades, Dracula/Lisa (Castlevania), Morana/Striga (Castlevania)
Series: Out of the Woods [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1669078
Comments: 20
Kudos: 59





	1. Prologue: Eight of Clubs

**Author's Note:**

> So I know I said I'd be back in April, but now that I've been self-quarantined at home for 5 days with absolutely nothing to do I thought I'd get off my ass and write. So here you all go, the sequel to my insane, too-long story nobody asked for. 
> 
> Season 3 who? Don't know her, sorry. ~~I don't care about anything that happened in s3 except for the Styrian Quartet dont @ me~~

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Eight of Clubs:** _Intelligence, strength and determination, the ruthless pursuit of one's goal._

**_Carmilla_ **

The shards of the mirror reflected the dying evening light, limning each delicate, razor-sharp edge with white gold as they rose gracefully from the chest within which they had rested. She crossed her arms over her chest as they spun and danced into formation, flickering and winking, her own disjointed, broken reflection gazing impassively back at her. 

The shards moved together, forming a single, unbroken surface as they settled with the sound of tinkling glass, a sound that calmed her invariably—even the prospect of seeing them brought her joy, brought her something akin to peace. She didn’t know peace, not really, hadn’t known it since her sire had taken every ounce of it from her broken body and had crushed it beneath his feet. But when she saw them, heard their voices, felt them beside her, she almost thought she had it again. 

The surface of the mirror rippled and shimmered, her reflection dissolving like ice into water as the image shifted, blurring into a familiar room, high-ceilinged and wide, a massive table in the middle with four high-backed chairs around it. A fire was roaring in the grate, and even though she couldn’t feel its heat something about the fact that the place was exactly as she had left it made a small bud of warmth unfurl in her chest. 

They were sitting in the chairs, the three of them, bickering good-naturedly as they always were. There was a map spread on the table, but none of them were even looking at it. Well, she amended, Morana probably had looked at it already, and had memorized the whole thing, every line and battlement and placement. 

“If we cannot even take the throne then why bother?” Striga was saying, disgust and annoyance clear in every syllable. “We might as well tell the man that we’re planning to decimate his seat of power and surrender with an apology.”

“We might still be able to take the throne though, won’t we?” Lenore asked, folding her arms on the table and leaning forward. A curl of red fell across her eyes and she brushed it away with a petite hand, the nails filed down, short and practical. It was something Carmilla always scoffed about, the _Just because you make peace doesn’t mean you have to get rid of your nails, too, you know,_ to which she would reply, _Well, it is harder to convince someone you mean them no harm when you have three-inch talons on the end of your hands, isn’t it?_

“I mean, if Dracula does ultimately step down and leave the responsibility to his son, then it might be easier to stir the court up. He’ll be inexperienced, vulnerable and unable to deal with rebellion in the first few weeks of his reign,” Lenore went on. “I thought that might be the safest way to go about this.”

“His father will be behind him always,” Morana countered, tapping a finger on the table and shaking her head. “As long as Dracula is there guiding his son we cannot get close. Not that way, at least.”

“Girls, girls,” Carmilla called, smirking but secretly enormously pleased to see them discussing this with such seriousness and zeal, and even more enormously pleased to see them again. God, it had been weeks. “Leave some arguments for me, too, won’t you? Or have you forgotten about me already?”

They all turned in unison with identical surprised looks on their faces towards her, and she grinned at them, sketching a short, ironic bow. “Oh, they’ve noticed me, how flattering.” She straightened, still smiling. “Hello, sisters. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Carmilla!” laughed Lenore, standing and moving toward where the mirror in their Council chamber stood. Striga was rolling her eyes but smiling anyway, and Morana smirked knowingly, lifting a chalice of blood to her lips. “It had been so long since you deigned to grace us with your esteemed presence that we thought we’d argue a little extra just in your memory,” she called, taking a sip. 

“How sweet.” She crossed her arms, lifting a brow. “I leave you alone for a few weeks and you’ve all gone mad with power already.”

“Oh, we started off mad with power,” Striga called, crossing her arms with a familiar glint in her eyes. “You were just too busy congratulating yourself to notice.”

“Oh, please.” She allowed herself a grin. “Anyhow, we’ve got something of a problem. We’ve hit a snag in the plan.”

“There was no plan to begin with,” Striga protested, leaning back in her chair. “It was just, ‘go to the council meetings, try to convince people that Alucard is not the right choice for the throne, win the ensuing arguments and take over’.”

“Well, yes,” Carmilla said after a pause. “That is a plan.”

Striga opened her mouth to protest, and Carmilla held up a hand. _“Anyway,”_ she went on, “all that besides, we’ve got some... complications.”

“Well?” Lenore asked, brows drawing together. “What is it?”

“I think you mean _who_ is it,” sighed Carmilla, massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers. “It’s the boy, Alucard. There’s quite a bit I haven’t been able to tell you since I’ve been gone, a lot of little things here and there that will aid us in reaching our goal. Deals, deceptions and the like. I made one with Alucard; he gives me information about his father’s plans of obliterating humankind, and I refrain from telling Dracula about... well.” She felt a little smirk tug at her lips. “About his nightly dalliances with the youngest Belmont boy and a Speaker girl.”

Lenore’s brows rose high. “My, my,” she said. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. It’s pathetic.” She examined her flawless nails. “He’s so in love with them it’s hard to watch them without puking your guts out. Leaves the castle to meet them every night in this little village a few miles away. So I hold my tongue and he gives me information—that was the deal.” She sighed, folding her arms. “But the filthy little half-breed double crossed me. He gave me something, but it turned out to be a steaming pile of utter shit.” 

She tossed her mane of hair over one shoulder. “And to make it worse he made me swear to step down and stop vying for the throne in exchange for said steaming pile of utter shit. By the time I realized, there was no point in holding his lovers over his head anymore because Dracula already found out about them. They’re all staying together in the castle now after that fire at the Belmont place, all peaceful and happy. It’s sickening.”

All three of her sisters exchanged a look. “Well,” Lenore said, “it seems you’ve been rather busy in the past few weeks.”

“It’s been a fucking nightmare,” Carmilla said, seething. “At this rate we’re never going to unseat that stupid old man and his lovestruck son in time.”

Morana was looking at her with a brow raised, appraising and calculating. As Carmilla watched, the tiniest of smirks curled her lips. “You’re not going to,” she said. 

“What?”

“You’re not going to step down,” Morana said, delicately tucking a wayward lock of sleek dark hair behind a pointed ear. “You lied to the boy. And even if you hadn’t planned on lying to him when you said it, after he double crossed you, you decided it wasn’t worth it. You’re going to do everything you can to take that throne anyway. Aren’t you?”

There was a pause—and then Carmilla burst out laughing, shaking her head. “Oh, you know me far, far too well, Morana,” she said, flicking an errant strand of hair out of her eyes, still grinning. “Far too well. Alucard is, quite literally, a _child_. He’s far too young and far too inexperienced for that throne; relieving him of that duty will be all but a mercy. Moreover he isn’t even a full-blooded vampire, _and_ to top it off he has two human pets. It’ll be a disgrace for us to have to answer to him.”

“Does anyone in the court share your sentiment?” asked Striga. “Anyone you’ve managed to talk into this insane scheme of yours?”

“I haven’t had much time for all that, have I?” she asked irritably. “I’ve been trying to keep this situation under control here all by myself, I can’t juggle the boy, the court and the plan all at once, even if they’re all part of the same scheme.”

“I’m marching in with the reinforcements in a few days’ time,” Striga said dismissively, waving a hand. She, too, had filed her nails down to the quick, but hers were ragged at the ends from handling swords and axes and knives, bows and lances and whips. “Don’t worry, Carmilla. Before long I will be at your side once again.”

“I might go mad by then, surrounded only by stupid children who do nothing but wail at me all day,” she said, heaving a long-suffering sigh. “But yes, we won’t be able to do much before you arrive. Until then...” She looked between the three of them standing in the council chamber in Styria, there in front of her but still so far away, gazing at her with expectant trust and loyalty. God, how she loved them all. 

“Until then,” she said, nodding at her sisters, “we wait.”

* * *

The little encampment she and what little troops she could bring without seeming suspicious had settled in was shitty on its best days, but then again it was quite literally a camp. Sun-proof tents made of some sort of special cloth—according to Morana—had been set up in a little clearing a ways away from Dracula’s castle, housing her and the few soldiers she’d managed to bring with her from Styria. They did the job anyhow, blocking out the sun’s rays and giving them shelter and secrecy and seclusion. 

Whenever she wasn’t in the castle suffering through those painfully slow, one-sided council meetings she was there, in her tent—which she had to admit wasn’t _too_ horrible, but she preferred to complain about it than admit it—planning or reading, and generally doing whatever she could to make the plan work. 

She drew the papers Alucard had given her from the drawer beneath the desk, placing them in front of her. Useless, as she had realized on the second or third week, eyes moving over the symbols and words that had taken days upon days to translate into absolute nonsense. She knew the instant it began to make no sense that he had deceived her. 

“The little shit,” she muttered to herself as she looked at the inked-in symbols and numbers on the sheets. Surely he knew that she would realize he had tricked her, and surely he knew that she would not be as forgiving as he’d hope. She wondered why, not for the first time. 

Of course there was the most obvious reason; what he had found (and she was sure he had found something, something important) was either incredibly valuable, incredibly dangerous, or both. Or perhaps he needed her out of the way for a few weeks, needed her to back away for a while. She still didn’t know what he and his lovers had been doing in the woods all those long hours after midnight, but the way the whole place reeked of magic made her wonder more than idly. 

Then there was the question of the Belmont fire. 

It had been so sudden, so _random_. News and rumors had spread faster than the fire itself, rippling across the country. Retribution, people whispered, all the people they hadn’t been able to save over the years they had been cowed by the Church taking their revenge. Others called it fate, something long-overdue coming to fruition—the Church had been planning to burn the house and kill the family before they had made the decision to value their lives above their honor. 

Carmilla wasn’t so sure that was the case. 

She was sure something had happened in the woods that had caused the Belmont fire, the same thing that had taken so much of Alucard Țepeș’ time in the past few months. Something so big and so serious that it had made him need to double cross her— _her_ , who she was sure he knew was smarter than to fall for such a ridiculous ruse—just to get her out of the way, and not tell his parents about it. 

And clearly that something had been taken care of now; the stench of magic that had wreathed the woods had come down in the past few weeks, and the villagers were going back into the forest as they once used to. They seemed entirely unafraid now, confident almost, venturing further into the trees than she’d ever seen them go. 

So it was probably safe to assume that Alucard, the Belmont boy and the Speaker girl had angered some powerful entity in the forest that had been hurting or killing the village people, which had then somehow escaped its confinements in the forest and set fire to the Belmont family home, after which Alucard had dumped them all in his father’s castle where they were now. 

Of course she was still missing a few integral pieces to this whole shitshow of a puzzle—why had the entity targeted the Belmont place? Had the boy in particular angered it? Or was it connected to him somehow? And, more importantly, what was it? Why was it important enough to displace so many other things? Too many questions and no answers, though Carmilla wasn’t planning on getting them. What was the point? As long as it was dead and gone now, and as long as it left Alucard vulnerable, she could move on with the plan. 

She sighed, setting the papers aside again and opening the chest that held her distance mirror, flicking her fingers. The shards rose gracefully, arranging themselves to her liking as she peered into the iridescent surface. She frowned at her reflection for a moment, looking at it but not seeing it, not really—before she snapped her fingers, jerking back to focus. 

“Show me the boy,” she said, two fingers held up. Then, mostly to herself, she added under her breath, “It’s after midnight; he might be snooping around his father’s things, unless he’s forgotten about our deal.”

The surface rippled and twisted, then shimmered into focus again, coalescing into the image of a bedroom, most likely Alucard’s, if the sketches of his human pets all over every visible surface were anything to go by. It was dark, the curtains open to let starlight and moonshine in. Their silvery light reached the bed, faintly illuminating the three figures atop it, tangled up in each other and all fast asleep. 

She made a face and raised a hand to dissolve the image when she paused, feeling her eyebrows draw together as she beheld the three of them entwined on the bed. They looked... safe, even in sleep, as if even unconsciously there was no place they would rather be. They all seemed to curl into each other naturally, and if she didn’t feel like she was a hairsbreadth away from vomiting then she would almost have called it adorable. 

The girl murmured something in her sleep, rolling over and slinging an arm around Alucard’s middle, burying her face in his hair. Taking it as her cue to leave before she could call herself a voyeur, Carmilla waved a hand, the image dissolving once more into her own reflection. 

She allowed the magic of the mirror to sever, rendering it disjointed and suspended once more, turning and bracing herself against the table. It was something she’d seen more than often in Striga and Morana, that too-easy, too-perfect sort of togetherness that left a sour taste in her mouth. It wasn’t as if she didn’t want them to be happy, nor was it that she wasn’t happy for their happiness in turn. It was just that sometimes it was hard to be around people who were co clearly... _in love_ , when she knew she’d never feel that herself. 

She supposed she should take it as a blessing, that something integral in her had shattered during those long, cold, lonely decades she had spent with her sire, something that had fractured her ability to really be with another person that way. Physicality was temporary, but she couldn’t let herself be vulnerable around anyone. She couldn’t let herself be weak. And love was a weakness. 

She had loved, once, before she had been turned. It had been a long time ago, long enough that the world had been entirely different then, but she still remembered. She’d have to be dead to forget—or, deader. Fleeting memories that danced in and out of her consciousness like a ribbon in the wind; long auburn hair, a blue skirt whispering around slender ankles, cherry lips and long lashes. 

But her sire had taken that from her, the ability to love. And most of the time she was grateful for it. But sometimes she hated him for it, more than she hated him for breaking her mind and her body and her soul. 

She exhaled, closing her fingers into fists. Her nails cut into her palm hard, drawing blood. The plan. She had to focus on the plan. Not mope like a hapless peasant girl who’d had her heart broken by the milkmaid. She was a Queen, a woman of cold logic. She didn’t need love. 

She shook her head to clear it of the thoughts, casting them aside as easily as she cast aside her waking dreams. She shut the lid of the chest with a snap, sweeping outside the tent and into the night air before she could allow herself to linger too long on what she knew she couldn’t afford to. There were a thousand other things that were more important, that needed her constant attention. 

The guards and soldiers all shrank back and bowed away as she walked through the encampment, a sudden hush falling over the clearing. She didn’t look at any of them as she moved through the ranks, striding through the tents and into the forest. 

Even though she spent most of the day inside the tent she could hear the forest come alive, hear the din of insects and the growl of wild woodland animals as they all woke from their slumbers. But the forest came alive at night, too; a different forest, the other side of the coin. Snakes and bats and foxes and owls roused a din of their own when evening waned into night and the moon rose high above the trees. 

Animals had instincts—millennia worth of instincts—that made them wary of her, of her kind. They stayed away from her, lurking in the shadows as she passed, much like the troops in the camp had done. But then again what were those soldiers but animals themselves, bred for war and trained for nothing else? Counted not as one but as a whole? 

She sighed to herself as she traversed through the undergrowth, stepping carefully among the uneven ground in her heels. She prided herself on being able to do almost anything in heels, fighting included—even if she didn’t do much of it. 

She walked northwest, following the ever-so-faint smell of old, corroded magic, like burned sugar and lit candles that stretched out like a path leading deeper into the trees. Even if it was inconsequential to her plan, she wanted to know what had happened. There could be something there that she could use, and moreover it was always good to have an advantage over the boy, that she wouldn’t be in the dark. 

After what felt like hours of walking through the brambles and thorns and vines that lay like a minefield between her and the camp she caught sight of something bright and pale in the shadows ahead, slanting through the shadows that had gathered between the trees. She slowed, then stopped completely, squinting at it—before realizing that it was merely a ray of moonlight, somehow impossibly finding its way through a tiny gap in the trees above. 

She moved towards it, the scent of dying magic strengthening as she did. She pushed aside the last of the hanging branches as she neared it, moving forward—and then stepped back swiftly, narrowly avoiding the deep pit that had been dug directly beneath the light. 

She felt her brows draw together as she beheld it—a grave, clearly, judging by the length and width of it, and how deep it seemed to go; she couldn’t even see the bottom. It appeared to have been dug forcefully, if the roughness of it and the deep trenches in the earth inside either side of the grave were anything to go by. It hadn’t been filled fully, and the soil around it was upturned and loamy. 

Here, the smell of magic was strongest. 

So this had to be the entity that had burned the manor down. Besides the cloying scent of decaying intent that shrouded the place she could make out something else, a more faint whiff of cold berries and frost, rusting bells that still chimed as sweetly, and honeyed blood that made nausea rise in the back of her throat. Faerie magic. 

She narrowed her eyes, moving away from the upturned grave. She walked further west, her steps quickening as she felt the air lighten around her skin, promising the forest’s end a few meters ahead. Once she cleared the trees and stepped out into the open, she finally laid eyes on what remained of the Belmont family home. 

It was but a ghostly skeleton now, the walls having crumbled fully and almost all of the house entirely eaten away. Its shell had survived only because it had been built with stone, and it loomed above her, looking oddly sinister with the moon rising behind it, crowning it with silver light. The smell of magic lingered here too, but this was different, older. The smell of the river between life and death. 

She frowned, stepping over the crumbling walls and into the estate. Whatever magic was lingering there had clearly chased away every living thing that had made its home here in the surrounding grounds; it was deathly silent, not even the chirp of crickets or the buzzing of insect wings to indicate that there was any life there. All she could hear was the wind, rustling through the trees in the still night air, whispering breathless, tongueless whispers.

The smell of death was everywhere, death and life and everything in between. Something had happened here, something that had upset that crucial balance if only for a moment. If she could only find out what, then perhaps she could use it somehow, hold it against the boy—

Her foot struck something hard and elevated, making her lurch back. She regained her balance swiftly enough, stepping back before she could trip, pulling the hem of her dress out of the way. She looked down, feeling a frown draw her brows together.

Embedded in the ground was a large stone slab, plated with gold and covered in sigils and runes, with the Belmont family crest hammered directly into the middle. She couldn’t recognize the archaic languages the runes were in, but she knew the instant her eyes alighted on it what it was. 

“Well, well,” she said aloud to herself, the beginnings of a smile tugging at her lips as she gazed down at it. “I do believe we have a problem.”

* * *

“The Belmont family trove? Are you sure?” 

Morana sounded—dubious. That, and suspicious. Striga was frowning, looking unconvinced, and Lenore had a look on her face that Carmilla, for the life of her, couldn’t decipher. 

All in all, it wasn’t the dramatic, shocked response she had been hoping for. 

“Yes, of course I’m sure,” she snapped. “What else could it be? A pretty gold-plated rock they keep in their basement?”

Striga opened her mouth and Carmilla narrowed her eyes, pointing a finger at her. _“Don’t_ say it.”

She closed her mouth again, looking bemused. “Well, even if it is,” she said, “what do you plan on doing with the fact that you know where it is?”

“Use the fucking thing, obviously,” she said. “What else would we do with it?”

Morana sighed, standing up and setting her chalice down. “No vampire has ever laid eyes on the inside of the Belmont Hold,” she said. “Every one of our kind who has ever gotten close has been killed, and their remains taken to adorn their glass cases as if we are nothing more to them than spoils. The inside of that place is a trap, a death trap, for all of us.”

Carmilla half-turned away from the mirror, ideas flitting in and out of her mind, each more improbable than the last. They had to use the damn thing—knowing where the Hold was was in itself a huge advantage. She was sure there were more than a few things in there that would do more than help them unseat Dracula. 

“Moreover they’re probably going to rebuild the house,” Lenore supplied. “So they’ll be around there, won’t they? And often, too.”

“That’s during the day,” Carmilla said, waving a hand. “The place is empty at night. Nothing lives there anymore, the whole place stinks of necromancy. Not a single living thing in a two-mile radius.”

“Necromancy?” Morana was frowning. “What do you mean?”

“The thing that burned the house down,” Carmilla said. “There’s no way that fire was an accident. There’s a freshly dug grave not a mile into the woods from the house, and the same magic trails to the remains. The magic around the forest has come down in the past few weeks. I think they killed whatever it was that was in the woods, which took the Belmont place with it.”

“They?” Striga said. “The boy and his lovers?”

“They’d been spending time in the woods—too much time,” she said. “It didn’t really take a genius to put the pieces together. The boy wasn’t exactly subtle. He tricked me just to get me out of his hair for a few weeks.”

“And his father knows?” asked Morana. 

“I’m sure he does. If he knows about his pets, then this had to have come up. We can’t take the risk of assuming he doesn’t know. It doesn’t seem likely,” she said, shaking her head. “Which makes the knowledge completely useless, since we can’t hold anything about that against him to get him to tell the truth.”

“Are you meeting him again?” Lenore asked, folding her hands primly in her lap, the picture of a promising young woman, innocent and polite. Carmilla knew better than to see only what she presented; she’d learned over the decades they’d been sisters that Lenore was the most ruthless of all of them. She supposed that sometimes to make peace, you had to be. 

“Yes, tonight. In less than an hour, actually,” sighed Carmilla. “And I’m sure he knows I’ve realized by now that he tricked me, so there’s no point pretending.”

“So will you confront him, or...?” Striga raised an eyebrow, and she shrugged. “It depends on him, really,” she said. “If he plays dumb, I’ll confront him. Otherwise I’m not wasting my breath on that ridiculous little boy.”

“I still think there’s a more... _civil_ way to go about this,” Lenore insisted, delicately sipping from her own goblet. “If you went about this in a more diplomatic way he might—”

“He might take advantage of it,” Carmilla snapped. “I can’t let him think I’m willing to fold myself in half to keep things the way he wants.”

Lenore smiled a small, unreadable smile. “There’s a little more to diplomacy than that,” was all she said. 

“Either way I’m not willing to be any more civil than I’ve been already,” Carmilla said dismissively. “And on that note, I have to meet the little shit now. I’ll contact you again once I return; until then, make this work, I can’t do _all_ the work around here.” 

Ignoring all three of them rolling their eyes in unison she turned away, not allowing them to see her grin as she waved a hand, allowing their image on the mirror to dissolve into mist, the surface rippling back into her reflection. She snapped her fingers, allowing the mirror to lower gracefully into the chest once again, turning away and leaving the tent. 

The camp was still and silent as she walked through—but then again it was always still and silent. She left the clearing, heading east this time, towards the castle. She went alone this time, rather than taking a few of her soldiers along as she had done the last few times. She needed to appear as guileless as possible, even if she couldn’t care less. 

He was already at the clearing when she approached it, eyes alert to look out. His back was to her, and he was looking up at the sky, at the stars scattered above like crushed diamonds strewn across fathomless navy velvet. She walked forward, not bothering to seem discreet; his senses were as sharp as hers, if not more so. 

She’d been right; he turned fluidly the moment she stepped into the clearing, his eyes falling on her. Not for the first time she felt a strange sort of unease, as she had before around the son of Dracula; his eyes were neither his father’s red nor his mother’s blue but a strange, opaque gold, and while he was undoubtedly beautiful it wasn’t human beauty—porcelain and perfect, elegant and inhuman. But even so there was something mortal about him, an air of humanity that seemed to be curled in his blood, in his bones. He smelled the way humans did, like mortality and sunlight and forbidden things. He was a strange dichotomy in himself, a hybrid of two species that were mortal enemies. So which was he?

He turned fully once she’d reached the middle of the clearing, his expression carefully neutral, his body language even more so. He was almost stiff. Not a very good liar, then. Not when she was looking for it, at least. Few people could lie to her and get away with it when she was looking for it. 

She reached into her cloak and pulled out the papers he’d given her, raising her eyebrows at him. “I suppose you thought yourself very clever for giving me this nonsense,” she said. “I trust you’ve actually brought me of substance this time, else I won’t be this forgiving.”

He had the gall to look startled—the nerve of this boy, she thought, seething—as he took the papers from her. “I—what do you mean?”

She sighed expansively. “You really thought I would fall for that,” she said, “didn’t you? I trust this time you won’t make the mistake of thinking I’m not thorough.”

He blushed. It was startlingly visible on his pallor as he looked back up at her, blinking. “I—I mean, I don’t—”

“I know what you’ve been doing in the woods, Alucard,” she said, taking a blind chance, and she knew it was an uncertainty, a shot in the dark—but it was a well-aimed one, she realized as he blanched, his lips parting. His eyes flicked over her face, and she raised an eyebrow. “You haven’t been as discreet as you think,” was all she said. 

“Have you been following me?” he asked, his golden eyes narrowing, and she laughed. “No. God, no. I have better things to do with my time than follow a silly little boy on his silly little adventures. It wasn’t difficult to put the pieces together, you know. All it took was a little casual observation, and more than a little speculation.”

He clenched his jaw visibly. “What do you want, Carmilla?”

“I thought I’d made that clear the last time you asked me that,” she said, her own eyes narrowing. “I’m not going to answer you again.”

He hesitated, and she could almost feel the reluctance rolling off of him. She stepped closer, ignoring the way he stiffened as she did. She could smell the Belmont boy’s scent all over him, and the girl’s too. She tried not to gag. “I know you found something in your father’s collections,” she said, pitching her voice low. “You might have gotten away with lying to me once, but be sure of it when I say that you will not get away with it a second time.”

He looked ever so slightly cornered, and he seemed to want to step back, but decided against it. “I didn’t find anything,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s nothing in there that would be of any interest to you.”

“Let me be the judge of that, hmm?” She folded her arms across her chest. “I’ve upheld my end of the bargain, Alucard. It’s time you did the same, or the deal is off. I will vie for that throne, and don’t doubt that I can get the War Council stirred up against you. The only reason they shrink and say nothing is because they’re afraid of your father. Once I eliminate that fear it’s only a matter of time.”

His throat worked, and she felt no satisfaction, only the sense that she was getting a job done with maximum efficiency. This wasn’t a game to her, nor was it a cat-and-mouse game. It was a job, a plan. And her duty was to ensure everything moved as smoothly as possible. 

“Fine,” he bit out finally. “I’ll bring them next week.”

“You don’t have anything on you now?”

“No.” He sounded firm and she eyed him, but this time she couldn’t read him as easily. He looked completely blank, save for the slight stiffness in his posture. She decided not to pry, stepping back and still eyeing him carefully. “Fine,” she said. “But if you return here next time empty-handed you won’t find me this relenting.”

“Why do you want his plans?” he asked, crossing his arms. “What are you going to do with them if you get your hands on them?”

“More than he’s doing with them right now,” she said dismissively. “My motives are my own, little dhampir. I don’t owe you anything, much less an explanation. You’ll bring me whatever you can find and you keep your mouth shut around mum and dad, that’s all you have to do.”

“How do I know you won’t use his plans for your own benefit? And how do I know you don’t misuse what give you—if I do give it to you?”

She sighed irritably. “You don’t, obviously. But if you back out now then there will be nothing between me and your father’s throne.”

“There will be me,” he said. 

Her lip curled. “Yes, there will be you. Who I can take care of easily enough. What is your knowledge and your coddled upbringing against my centuries of experience of being a queen?”

“My father’s backing,” he said coldly, gloved fingers twitching into fists. “He does not want you on that throne, Queen of Styria. And nor do I.”

“Whyever not?” She smirked at him. “Afraid I’ll change things up a bit? Right your father’s wrongs? Prove his incompetence by ruling better than he ever could? He has a human wife and a dhampir son. The only reason he still sits on that throne is because he is Dracula. If he didn’t have that power on his side then we would have rooted him out long ago. One who consorts with such indecency with humans, who are nothing more to us than food and slaves—it’s a disgrace. But not as much of a disgrace as it will be to have to answer to a slip of a boy who is half-human. I would make a far better queen than either you or your father could hope to be.”

He scoffed, the papers she had given him crackling in his tight grip. “Now there’s no danger of that,” he said, “since you’ve sworn to step down... haven’t you? You won’t come between me and the throne again, that’s what you said.” He turned challenging eyes to her, as if daring her to admit she had lied to him—which she had. He simply didn’t need to know that just yet. 

“It is,” was all she said instead, inclining her head to him. 

He looked at her—he was clearly suspicious, but he said nothing—and stepped back, nodding to her in turn. “Very well,” he said. “Next week, same time.”

“Remember,” she called as she turned away, “next time one of us is going to leave this clearing empty-handed, and it is not going to be me. I won’t be forgiving if you come here with more hollow excuses.”

“And if I do?” 

She turned around at his words, her eyes narrowing, meeting his gaze. He arched a supercilious eyebrow, and she felt the sudden urge to slap the smug look off his face. Spoiled little brat. 

“My father knows,” he said. “You can’t hold them against me anymore.”

“Oh, I know,” she said dismissively, and he looked taken aback, which made a jolt of satisfaction shoot through her. It was always gratifying to do that—to see exactly how much men underestimated her power of observation and her ability to reason. Logic was something she prided herself on, and incidentally something men could not use. Not in her experience, anyway. 

“There’s plenty of things I can dangle over your head, little half-breed,” she sneered. “You’ve made your fair share of mistakes.” She smiled at him before turning and leaving the clearing, leaving him standing alone in the middle, crumpling the sheets she had given back to him entirely between his fists.

* * *

That night she watched the castle. 

It was still and silent, eerie almost. There was no sound but for the chirp of crickets and the occasional rustle as foxes moved about in the underbrush. Everyone appeared to be asleep, save for a single light somewhere high above. She wondered idly who it might be. Dracula, perhaps. 

She didn’t know why she was there, standing and watching the damn place as if she expected it to sprout legs and scuttle away like some massive insect. But for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to leave, some unidentifiable instinct rooting her to the spot and tethering her there. 

She sighed, leaning back against the tree behind her. It seemed odd, unbelievable even, that the Belmont family, the most famous line of vampire hunters in Europe, was currently residing in the lair of their greatest enemy and lifelong foe. Peace could do strange things, even cow instinct and restrain honor. She supposed that was why Lenore could be so remorseless sometimes. Creating peace took the hardest of hearts. 

A faint creak made her snap back to attention and she peered at the castle doors, squinting into the dark. If she drew breath, she would have held it as the doors opened slowly, just a crack. A small figure slipped between them, one swathed in sky-blue, with a cloud of strawberry-blonde crowning their head. 

She felt her brows draw together as the Speaker girl stepped outside the castle, closing the door quietly behind her. She sat at the steps for a few minutes, unmoving and still, so still Carmilla almost thought she’d fallen asleep again. Just when she thought so the girl stood, moving down the steps and into the night. 

She saw her stand beneath the moonlight, face tilted up so that its silver glow drenched her whole body. The faint scent of her blood reached Carmilla where she stood concealed in the trees, smelling faintly of magic and energy. A Speaker magician, then. Odd company for a dhampir and a hunter. 

The girl turned and moved away into the trees opposite, disappearing into the woods without a backwards glance. Restless, then. She had heard her pulse, too quick and too steady for her to have woken in the middle of the night. So she couldn’t sleep... and left the castle at night. A strangely convenient situation. 

And no strange situation could go unexploited. 

She felt the plan form in her head, a jumble of thoughts and ideas that all coalesced into possibly the most insane, most ridiculous dream she had ever dreamed up. If they timed it right, and if Lenore could manage to work her magic, then it might just be possible. 

_Vampires and sisters,_ she thought to herself with a grin, _I have a scheme._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Styrian Quartet of Sisters own my whole heart, soul and ass.


	2. Ace of Clubs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Ace of Clubs:** _Peace of mind, a period of peace and well-being, prosperity and satisfaction._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CW: Graphic sexual content. The tags say 'a lot of sex' and I mean to follow through. Do not judge me, I mean business.**

**_Adrian_ **

He lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the sun so that he could see, squinting up at the remains of the Belmont family manor. 

Bracketed by the rays of the noonday sun it seemed to glow from the inside out, the hollow stone shell of it filled with golden light that spilled through the cracks in its facade and through the broken windows. Persistent creepers and ivy had already begun snaking around it, twining through the cracks and growing on the rails, slender ropes of green lashing around the whole place. 

Winter had melted into spring, and the sun was beating down onto him, making sweat stick his hair to his forehead and his nape, and his shirt to his back. He had eschewed his coat and boots a while ago, hot as it was, and the loose, dry earth was cool beneath his bare feet. It smelled like growing grass and wilderness, and layered underneath that was the scent of old, rotted magic, evidence of their battle with Aalis so many weeks ago. He wondered whether it would ever fade entirely, or whether it would linger there forever, a reminder of the Belmonts’ bloodstained inheritance and the mistakes of their forefathers. 

“It looks years old already, doesn’t it?” said a voice at his ear, and he turned to see Trevor, hands in his pockets and gazing almost wistfully at the ruins of his old home. The scar across his left eye had already paled and faded entirely into his skin, faint pink, and Adrian had gotten so used to it on his face that he couldn’t imagine that there had been a time when he’d been without it. 

“It does,” Adrian said, turning back towards the house, still shading his eyes against the sun. “Spring came early this year, helped the plants grow faster.”

“No animals, though.” Trevor looked around, looking lost in thought. “Nothing, not even bugs. I’ve noticed it for a while now, it seems... odd.”

“Repelled by the old magic, I suppose,” Adrian said. “It still smells of undeath here, faintly. It hasn’t faded, not for months. I doubt it ever will, and as long as the house remains dilapidated I fear nothing will dare come roost or nest here. Animals have instincts, especially the animals in these woods. It drives them away from danger.”

“Nothing dangerous here though, is there?” He scuffed the loose soil underfoot with the tip of his boot, sighing. “Nothing but memories, anyway.”

“Aalis was more powerful than any entity I’ve ever come across,” said Adrian. “Even dead and buried—properly, anyway—she left a mark behind on this land. One that runs far deeper than the burned remains of an old house. Her magic permeated the very earth around this place, the air and the stones of the house. That kind of lingering magic doesn’t fade easily.”

“I suppose once we start rebuilding the place it’ll get fainter.” Trevor glanced sideways, towards where his mother and Sypha were picking their way over the ruins, heads bent together in conversation so soft even Adrian could make out only soft murmurs. “Keep the foundations but fill the shell up anew. Hopefully it’ll stop repelling the woodland animals.”

“When will you start?” Adrian asked. “Rebuilding the place, that is.”

He shrugged. “Only after the church does their investigating,” he said. “Even though this is our land, they claim their jurisdiction extends over it because of my family’s relation to their institution. Once they snoop around and come up with a good reason for it burning down, we can start getting the place back on its feet. Until then, though...” He looked up at the ruins, an unreadable expression on his face. “Until then it’s just going to have to stay here.”

“And what of the Hold?” he asked as they set off across what had once been the grounds of the manor and towards where Sypha and Marie were standing, by the door of the Belmont Hold. “What will you do if they try and open it?”

“Play dumb, I suppose,” said Trevor with another shrug. “Act like we can’t get it open and we don’t know what it is. What else can we do?”

“Hmm.” He frowned. “Not much else can be done. They’ll be suspicious, though, and I doubt they will be quelled as easily. They’re known to pry where they’re unwelcome, your Christian church.”

“And your family is going to have to get out of the way,” said Trevor as they drew up to the doors where his mother and Sypha were standing. “If they find out we’ve all literally been living with Dracula, they’ll go insane.”

Adrian snorted. “Not as insane as they would go if they find out the Belmonts’ youngest son has fallen into bed with Dracula’s son and a Speaker magician at the same time.”

“If they were feeling merciful they’d kill us all if they found out about that,” Trevor said, sending him a careless sideways grin that still, after so many months together, never failed to make his heart stutter in his chest. “But a good enough reason to go to hell as any, isn’t it?”

“You think yourself already damned, then?” He raised an eyebrow, and Trevor shrugged, turning towards him fully. They’d stopped walking now, and with Adrian barefoot but Trevor still with his boots on he was slightly taller than Adrian. The brutal golden sunlight turned his eyes to pale, translucent silver, and they glittered, flashing like coins, enigmatic and mirthful as he stepped closer, so close he could feel every one of Trevor’s breaths on his lips. 

“I knew I was damned the minute I met you,” he said, leaning forward, his eyes drifting shut. Their lips touched, softly at first, then with more force as Adrian closed what little distance had remained between then with a single step. Trevor’s lips were warm and slightly chapped, and he tasted of wind and wilderness and Trevor. His fingers reached up automatically, tangling in his wind-tousled hair as he sighed against his mouth. 

Trevor gave a low, contented hum between his lips, and then he deepened the kiss, pressing closer to Adrian as he parted his lips with his own, his tongue brushing against Adrian’s. He felt his lashes brush against the tops of his cheeks and smiled a little into the kiss, shutting his eyes and letting the feeling of Trevor’s lips against his carry him on an aching swell of sensation. 

He heard someone wolf-whistle at them from across the grounds and they broke apart hastily, Adrian’s cheeks more than a little warm. He turned to see Trevor’s sister Chelsea grinning at them from near the other tower of the manor, blonde hair turned to burning gold by the sunlight, and when he caught her eye she winked at him, her grin widening. 

Trevor raised a hand and flipped her off, but he was laughing too, an arm still around Adrian’s waist. “Prude,” he called, lowering his hand, and she rolled her eyes at him. 

“Libertine,” she called back, and he only laughed harder, shaking his head. His hand slid down Adrian’s arm, fingers lacing with his as he tugged him back towards where Sypha was waiting, a bemused smile on her face. Trevor’s mother was next to her, smiling a little too as they stumbled over, both still a little pink in the face. 

“Well, there’s not much we can do to hide the Hold,” Marie was saying, nodding towards the gold-plated door shining benignly in the afternoon sun. A target, painted directly on the backs of the Belmont family. “It’s not like we can cover it up or anything. They’re looking for something to blame, and if they see we’re concealing something they won’t hesitate to put that blame onto us.”

“We’re already walking a pretty thin line,” Trevor said, frowning at the place where the manor’s doors had once been, now blown out by the fire. “They’ve been looking for a good reason to excommunicate the lot of us for decades.”

“Yes, well.” Marie knelt by the door, fingers tracing over the sigils hammered into the stone. She sighed. “Our ancestors treaded very carefully. They didn’t sneak out at night into the woods for years looking to rid the lands of monsters.” She looked up, raising an eyebrow at her son, who had the grace to look sheepish. 

“Anyway, what’s done is done,” she said, standing. “It was only a matter of time, I suppose—and now at least there are no more ghosts. Though I’m sure there are more secrets yet to be uncovered; our family’s line is a long one, and such inheritances are hardly bloodless. Or clean.” She dusted her hands off, appearing lost in thought. 

“All that’s left to do is wait, then,” Sypha said, her eyes lowered to look at the door. “Though I’m sure lying to the church is a crime worthy of punishment.”

“To the church anything is a crime worthy of punishment,” Marie said, and she sounded stiff, her voice tight. “Moreover, we’re not lying, not really; we’re... withholding.” 

“Because that’s so much better,” Trevor said with a roll of his eyes. “Either way if they find out somehow that there’s literally a secret basement beneath the house full of weapons and forbidden books and shit they’ll burn us all on stakes and make up some story about how we’re godless heretics or something.”

“They’ll come here soon,” Sypha said. “They’ll be here within weeks. It’s already been three months.”

“No matter how much we do, we will still only be as prepared then as we are now,” Marie sighed, glancing up again at the remains of the house. “So it is as you said; all we can do is wait.”

“And find somewhere to stay that isn’t Dracula’s fucking castle,” muttered Trevor. “Yet another reason for them to turn us all into spitroast.”

“You’re right,” Marie said, looking troubled. “We’ll have to go stay in the village nearby for the few days the church will be here. And you’ll have to lie low.” She turned to Adrian, who nodded. “My father has never been in the church’s good books, nor have they been in his,” he said. “He’s gotten used to avoiding them whenever he has to. I’m sure he’ll do the same when the time comes.”

“Dear God, this is such a mess,” Marie said, putting her face in her hands. “Why must they poke their noses into everything? Why must they have all the answers all the time? Is it not enough for them if we tell them a simple fire couldn’t be contained? Houses and manors burn down all the time.” She sighed, lifting her head. “Though they’ve always wanted to bring us down. Protectors of the people, the way they never were.”

“Mother.” Trevor extricated his fingers from Adrian’s, moving over to her and putting an arm around her shoulders. “You’ll worry yourself into broody circles if you don’t stop thinking about this. Come on, let’s go back home, it’s nearly lunchtime.”

She leaned her head against his shoulder, and once again Adrian was struck by exactly how small of a woman she was—she came just till Trevor’s shoulder, around the same height as Sypha. But she exuded a certain, distinct sort of authority that made her seem much, much taller than she actually was. 

“All right,” she sighed, and Trevor swooped down to peck her cheek. “Good,” he said. 

It was something Adrian had noticed in the three months they had all stayed together in his father’s castle—Trevor probably didn’t even notice it himself, but he always called the place _home_. It was never _let’s go back_ , or even _let’s go back to the castle._ It was always _let’s go home._ Something told Adrian he never meant it in a literal sense; to Trevor and his family, home would always be the hollow shell that was standing above them now. But home was also where they were all together, and that held more importance than any tangible structure. 

It was a long walk back to the castle, six or seven miles at least through the woods. But long distances always seemed shorter with everyone there, four of Trevor’s sisters, his mother, him and Sypha there to make it more bearable. They set off, all bickering and laughing as they moved through the sun-dappled forest, the path familiar to them from all the weeks they’d walked it, back and forth between the manor and the castle. 

Spring _had_ come early that year—the sun was strong, and the breeze warm as it flitted through the trees, whose branches had already begun to explode in vivid shades of green, birds gathering among the leaves and trilling out their sweet melodies as they passed underfoot. 

“It’s nice, isn’t it?” asked Sypha’s voice, and he turned to see her walking beside him, face tilted up towards the sun, a content look on her face. She turned her head to smile at him, and it was as if the light had trapped itself in her eyes, making them glow gold and blue. “Peaceful almost, after everything that happened.”

“It seems like so long ago now, yet it feels like it happened yesterday.” He reached out, brushing a stray lock of strawberry-blonde out of her eyes. She sighed, looking out over the forest spread around them, still smiling a little. “It does,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t believe it actually happened, that we actually did what we did.”

“A story worthy of your Speaker tales, I’ll wager,” he said, raising an eyebrow, and she laughed. “It is. You never know, somewhere halfway across Wallachia my grandfather or Arn could be telling that very story to another band of Speakers, speaking of our adventures and our perils, of everything that took place...”

“Then surely they will speak most grandly of Sypha Belnades and her unparalleled skill and unmatched intellect, and her razor wit,” Adrian teased, and she rolled her eyes despite the blush on her cheeks, looping her arm through his as they walked. “And,” he went on, more softly this time, “how Trevor Belmont and Adrian Țepeș would very likely not even have come close to solving the mystery without her, and even more likely be dead or close to it was she not there with them.”

“Sweet-talker,” she laughed, clinging tighter to his arm, and he smiled down at her. “It’s true, you know.”

“I know,” she said easily, leaning up to plant a little kiss on his cheek. “But that sentiment goes both ways.” She sighed happily, looking up at the swatches of blue sky they could see through the gaps made by the trees overhead. “And it is not only that, our story,” she went on, her eyes far away. “It is also the greatest love story in all the land, the story of the Speaker, the Belmont and the son of Dracula. The story of the Hunter, the Scholar and the Soldier who defeat great evil and love without boundary or hesitation.”

“And I trust they live happily ever after until the end of their days,” Adrian said, and unbidden in his mind rose the realization that he would live forever and they would not, and he would one day have to watch both of them die, Trevor and Sypha, and have to live in a world without them, a colorless gray world without love or laughter and only their memory to stay the long, cold nights that stretched ahead of him for all of eternity—

“They do,” Sypha said warmly, breaking through the morbid haze of thoughts in his mind. He pushed them away, knowing that now was not the time to dwell on them. “But their story isn’t quite over yet, I should think,” she went on, and she sounded uncertain, troubled almost. “It is something in the air I can feel, like a tide approaching. Happily ever after is still a ways away, I feel.”

“There is time, and we still have fight in us left to spare,” he said, tucking her smaller form against his, feeling her lean her head on his shoulder. “Whatever comes, we can face it together.”

“As it should be always,” she said softly, and even though she couldn’t see it, he smiled, resting his cheek on top of her curls. “As it should be always,” he echoed, and with that promise filling the air between them, they kept their silence.

* * *

“How is the house?” asked his mother, standing by the sink and washing the dishes, her hair caught up away from her face in a messy knot and her cheeks flushed. Since the Belmonts and Sypha had moved in they had settled into a little routine of sorts, all thirteen of them, alternating between who set up the dining table and who cleaned it up, and around it went. They day it was Adrian, his mother and father in the kitchen tidying up, sunlight streaming into the little room through the windows. 

“Much the same,” said Adrian, stacking up the pots and pans back into the cabinets. “Not much can be done until the church passes a verdict on what happened and whether it’s all right to start building again.”

“So they consider the Belmonts’ land to be their own, then?” his father asked, raising and eyebrow from where he was clearing the counters. “Do they think their land to come under their own jurisdiction?”

“Apparently.” Adrian shrugged. “Their laws are strange, and make little sense to me.”

“Always has the church claimed more than they deserve,” said his father darkly. “Always have they placed their own seals upon property that does not belong to them. So the manor must remain in ruins until they allow it?”

Adrian nodded, stacking more pots. “They may arrive in a few days’ time. The family will have to stay in the village until they return to the capital so that they won’t know they’re staying here with us.”

“Oh, yes,” laughed Lisa. “They definitely won’t allow them to rebuild the place if they knew they were staying here. I would never have expected it myself if you had told me, nor would I have believed it. The Belmont family, staying with Dracula? Why, it would be a scandal.” She grinned at Adrian and her husband, who both exchanged a bemused look. 

“It is odd, isn’t it?” his father said, appearing lost in thought. “But not altogether unexpected, I should think. It is a debt carried forward through generations, one that has yet to be repaid, and one I think no matter how much I do, it will never be...” He sighed. “But the Țepeș owe the Belmonts. Always remember that.” He put a brief hand on Adrian’s shoulder as he moved towards the counter.

“It’s been nice, actually,” Lisa said, turning and leaning against the sink, sleeves rolled up and hands wet and covered in soapsuds from the dishes. She smiled at Adrian, lifting a hand and brushing an errant curl of gold out of her eyes, leaving a bit of soap near her eyebrow. He decided not to mention it to her just yet. “Them staying here,” she went on. “It’s a good change of pace, a welcome distraction. And the castle has been far too empty all these years with just the three of us.”

“That I cannot dispute,” laughed his father, reaching his wife and lifting a hand, wiping the soap from her brow tenderly. “It appears Leon’s eyes are not the only thing he passed down to them—many of them have his stubbornness, his will, his wit.” He sounded wistful and sad almost, the same way he had sounded when he had told Adrian that their family owed Trevor’s. 

“Well, I’m sure he’d be thrilled that you’re being drowned in his descendants at the moment,” she said, smiling up at him, and he smiled back, the corners of his eyes crinkling. Adrian glanced away, feeling a little bud of warmth unfurl in his chest, wondering if that was how he looked at Trevor and Sypha—as if they were the only thing that mattered in the world, as if they were what made the earth turn and the stars wink in the sky.

“Oh, he would be delighted,” laughed his father, sounding amused, wryly so. “And it is the least I can do to shelter them here, and since Adrian brought them here besides.” He turned to see his father raising an eyebrow at him pointedly. 

“You know there was nowhere else to go,” he said, sliding the last pot into the cabinet. “Moreover I know you’ve come to like them all, don’t try to pretend otherwise—admit it, you’re fond of them.”

“I shall admit to nothing of the sort.” But he was smiling as he said it, betraying all the evidence to the contrary. Beside him, his mother roller her eyes, shaking her head at Adrian from behind her husband’s shoulder. “Careful, Vlad, or you’ll find yourself going soft soon enough,” she said, drying her hands on a dish towel and pulling her sleeves down. 

He tugged at a lock of her hair, moving towards the door. “I think you’ll find I have softened enough already for the two of you,” he said, and she laughed. “Vlad Dracula, the most feared vampire king in all the land, a domestic family man,” she said. “Who would have guessed?”

“Only for you, my dear.” He leaned down to kiss her before straightening and moving out of the kitchen, letting the door swing shut behind him. Adrian moved to follow, intending to return to his room where surely Trevor and Sypha would be waiting, when his mother caught his arm, spinning him around and stopping him. “Oh no, you don’t,” she said, shaking a finger at him. “I need your help, young man.”

He allowed her to pull him out of the kitchen, the door closing behind them. “Help? With what?”

“There are a couple of things upstairs in the lab I need to attend to, and I need assistance to do it lest I destroy the windows like I did the last time.”

“That was rather extraordinary.” He glanced at her sideways. “But not as extraordinary as the time you knocked all the shelves over, or the time before that when you melted a hole in the table, or the time before that when you—”

“All right, you’ve made your point.” She still hadn’t let go of his arm. “All the more reason for you to come up and help me, isn’t it? And children should always help their mothers, no matter how old they are.”

“The children, or the mothers?”

She pinched his side and he squirmed away, laughing and breathless. “All right, all right,” he said, trying to twist away to evade further tickling. “I’ll help you.”

“Good.” She smiled at him. They moved up a flight of stairs, climbing up to the next level where her lab was. She pushed the door open and they moved inside, the whole place smelling strongly of citrus and smoke. 

“One day the Belmont manor will be rebuilt,” his mother said, raising her eyebrows at him as she turned the burner’s knob, coaxing a flame to spring to life on the metal ring. “I doubt the church will be able to find enough evidence against them.”

“Hopefully they don’t.” He drew a book from the shelf, flipping it open to where his mother had tucked a skeletal leaf between the pages as a bookmark. “But we can never be sure.”

“What will you do then?” She braced her palms on the table, pulling out a glass bottle. “Will you go live with them to stay with Trevor?”

“Mother,” he sighed. “I don’t know. There’s a long, long time for that yet. Moreover if father wants me to take over as the general of the War Council then... I cannot leave the castle. I have to stay.”

“As you said, there’s a long time for that yet.” Her lips tilted into a wistful little smile. “You grew up so fast,” she said, not looking at him but at the contents of the bottle she was holding glimmering inside the glass, vivid blue. Most mothers would say that and mean time had flown by, or that they could still remember the early days when their children had been children, but in this case, it was rather literal; Adrian had grown quickly, too quickly for milestones to be counted and recorded the way regular mothers did. He had had this body for more than ten years now. And he would never have any other. 

“I know.” He put the book down, moving over to her and putting a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him, and not for the first time he wished that he had gotten her eyes, the bright blue of a winter sky. But he had been born with the inhuman golden eyes of one who was neither human nor monster but somewhere in between, hanging by an unholy thread in an unholy balance. 

_It is the color of Lucifer, gold,_ Aalis had told him, so long ago. _And he was an angel, once._

“But no matter how fast I have grown I’ll always be a little boy to you,” he said, and she laughed, putting an arm around his waist. “That you will be,” she said. “You were the most angelic baby, I only wished you’d stayed one for a little longer than six months, but it’s as you said.” She sighed. “Dear God, I’m getting old.” She shook her head, patting his shoulder before turning back to her work. 

“What did you find?” he asked, leaning over her journal, and she tapped the right page. “It’s the most fascinating toxin,” she said, “one I found a few days ago in the woods; I decided to bring it back to study it...”

* * *

He shut his bedroom door behind him, sighing as he did. It had been a long day, first at the Belmont manor, then at home in his mother’s lab, helping her work. They’d both skipped dinner, absorbed as they’d been in their research, and he could feel the day’s fatigue in his bones—not a bad kind of fatigue, but one born from a fruitful day’s work. 

“There you are,” Sypha’s warm voice said, and a second later he was being thoroughly kissed, her lips soft but firm against his. He laughed against her mouth, an arm sliding around her waist as he kissed her back, her own fingers weaving themselves into his hair as she held him against her. She pulled away a few seconds later, smiling radiantly. “We were waiting for you.”

“Oh?” He raised an eyebrow at the bed, where Trevor was sprawled, wearing nothing but his trousers, holding one of Adrian’s books in his hand with the sheets tangled around his legs. He wiggled his fingers at Adrian as he approached, sliding his thumb between the pages of the book to mark his progress. 

“We were,” he said, his free hand reaching up to pull Adrian down the moment he came within grabbing distance. Trevor’s kisses were always a little on the messier side, all breath and tongue and teeth, lips sliding heavily against Adrian’s when he pulled away. “Don’t worry, we’d never get started without you,” he said, grinning beatifically. 

“How sweet.” He reached up to undo the braid in his hair, sighing as he sat at the edge of the bed. He felt Trevor’s hands tangle with his where he was pulling at his hair, gently extricating Adrian’s fingers from the mass of blond tangles and working through them himself. “Relax,” he murmured, and Adrian shivered, his eyes closing as he felt him press a featherlight kiss to his nape. 

His eyes snapped open again when he felt something beginning to ease his boots off, and he looked down to see Sypha kneeling by the bed, gently pulling them off his feet. He leaned back against Trevor, whose fingers were still pulling the braid from his hair, sighing. “You’re both spoiling me,” he said, a smile tugging at his lips. 

“Anything for you.” She placed a soft little kiss on his ankle as she pulled the rest of his boot off, starting to remove the other. “You’ve been so busy all day, you’ve barely sat down, you haven’t had dinner...”

She eased his second boot off just as Trevor’s fingers freed the last plait from his hair, allowing it to fall loose around his shoulders. She stood, slightly taller since he was sitting on the bed, the soft light from the lamp by his bed crowning her head in gold and making her hair look like licks of fire. She reached out a careful hand, her palm coming to rest gently on his cheek. 

“Now,” she said softly, “we get to take care of you.”

He took her other hand, their fingers tangling together as he pulled her down, catching her when she stumbled into his chest, losing balance. She turned her face just as he tilted his upward and then they were kissing again, but this was harder, more driving, heated almost, Sypha’s fingers carding through his hair and tugging _just_ so, making his lips part in a gasp. She seized the distraction, opening his lips further with her own, her tongue stroking into his mouth, making the heady taste of her explode in his mouth. 

She pulled away far too soon and an involuntary little whine escaped his lips, making her laugh quietly. “Be patient, my love,” she murmured, pushing him back. He scooted away from the edge of the bed obligingly, Trevor’s legs curving around his hips as they pressed up against each other at the movement. 

“Off,” he said, tugging at the hem of Adrian’s shirt, and he reached down, pulling it up over his head, tossing it aside as he half-turned, Trevor’s lips tracing gently over his bare shoulder. His hands came to rest on Adrian’s hips as he peppered light, adoring kisses all over his back and shoulders, thumbs cresting over the arches of his hipbones. He found himself tilting his head to allow Trevor’s marauding lips better access, his tongue trailing a slow, sure path up the curve of his throat. 

His teeth closed gently over the skin just below his ear and a shiver spider-walked up his spine, a jolt of heat shooting down his body. He gasped, a hand reaching back to fist in Trevor’s hair in an involuntary response. He felt Trevor smile against his neck, pressing another kiss to his skin. “You like that?” he murmured, and his voice in Adrian’s ear like that made him squirm against him, breathless. “Feels good?”

“Trevor,” he heard himself say, his voice slurred and near-unrecognizable to his own ears, trying to escape the cage of Trevor’s legs around his waist and his hands on his hips, desperate for some kind of contact. “Please—”

“Shh,” he murmured, and his voice reverberated through Adrian’s back, a low, seductive thrum. His teeth latched onto his earlobe and tugged gently, sending another spike of sensation through him, skittering down his spine. “So impatient.”

He heard Sypha laugh again, soft and teasing, and looked up at her standing above the bed just as she tugged at her dressing gown, drawing it off her body and dropping it on the floor at her feet. He felt his mouth go dry as it fell—she wasn’t wearing anything underneath. 

She crawled towards them on the bed and right into Adrian’s lap, effectively trapping him even tighter with her knees locking behind his hips and her thighs around his waist. She braced her elbows on his shoulders, leaning down to press a line of bruising kisses down the column of his throat, her breath warm and her lips soft. She drew back, continuing laying a languid path of burning kisses down his chest, fingers skimming down his sides as her lips stopped just shy of the waistline of his trousers, which were now almost uncomfortably tight. 

He was sufficiently breathless now, heat sliding down his body at the feeling of both of them, Trevor’s lips on his neck and Sypha’s teasing breaths on the skin just below his navel. Her fingers worked expertly at the buttons on his trousers and he could feel himself blushing, biting his lip hard to try and stop any embarrassingly desperate sounds from forcing themselves past his lips as she carefully undid them and drew his trousers down his hips. 

Trevor’s fingers turned his face, lips seeking his, his other hand curling around his side. He obliged, lips parting willingly as his tongue sought entry, probing insistently at the seam of his lips. He tasted of whiskey and smoke, the slide of his tongue against Adrian’s heavy and making the musky taste of him flood his senses. He twisted around as far as he could, deepening the kiss, earning a low, satisfied purr from Trevor as one of his hands reached up to rest on Adrian’s cheek. 

He felt Sypha’s deft fingers tug his pants down further, and then without any warning whatsoever they wrapped firmly around his cock, giving him the slightest of squeezes. A raw, choked gasp tore past his throat, a soft string of profanity spilling into Trevor’s mouth as his whole body stiffened in response to the touch. 

Her other hand yanked his trousers off all the way and then she settled firmly into his lap, Trevor’s feet hooking behind his ankles and spreading his legs apart as she did. He pulled his lips away from Adrian’s and he gasped for breath, chest heaving as Sypha’s fingers stroked him evenly, slowly, her other hand curling around his jaw. 

Her thumb pressed against his lips insistently, carefully avoiding his fangs. He opened his mouth and she pushed her finger in, the pad of her fingertip dragging over his teeth as she did. He closed his lips over her thumb, sucking hard, and she hummed gratifyingly, her nails dragging ever so lightly over his cock as she did. His back arched helplessly into Trevor’s chest, his eyes squeezing shut as pleasure tore through his whole body, making it hard to breathe. 

He could feel Trevor’s own erection against the small of his back and the moan that it drew from his throat was muffled by Sypha’s finger in his mouth, tamping down the sound. He could feel sweat slicking his skin, making Trevor’s chest slide against his back, made his hair stick to his forehead and the nape of his neck. He was fully hard now, hips bucking into Sypha’s fingers involuntarily, breathing hard as Trevor’s lips traced a slow path down his spine. 

Sypha drew her finger from his mouth with a soft _pop_ , her other hand also withdrawing. He groaned, head falling back against Trevor’s shoulder as her hands crept up his chest to clench on his shoulders. She scooted further onto his lap, shaking her hair away from her face as she swallowed, breathing hard. Her eyes were huge and dark in the soft, dim light, cheeks flushed and lips parted. She looked like a goddess. 

Her fingers bit tighter into his shoulders as she lifted herself up, her lip catching on her teeth. He felt himself stiffen, his own lips parting as she looked down at him, her gaze locking onto his just as she took him inside her in one slow movement. 

“Shit!” His head snapped backwards, a ragged gasp tearing past his throat as his hands found the flare of her hips, gripping with frantic fingers. She was breathing heavily, her eyes darkening as she lowered herself onto him slowly, carefully, until she settled firmly into the cradle of his hips, sheathing him inside her all the way. He heard himself groan, his eyes drifting shut.

Her arms wrapped around his neck and she leaned her forehead against his, both of them breathing the same breath as she stilled for a moment, allowing both of them to adjust. Every single nerve in his body was firing simultaneously at the feeling of her irresistible velvety heat surrounding him, the scent of her spilling into his own body. 

He tilted his head to kiss her and she pulled him closer, a hand clenching in his hair as she responded enthusiastically, her lips moving over his in impatient caresses. Her nails scraped across the nape of his neck and his hips thrust up against hers instinctively. She moaned into his mouth, her breath warm and heady against his lips. She drew away, shifting slowly over him, almost experimentally, and both of them gasped at the sudden, unbearable friction of it. 

She began slowly, carefully, never letting her iron control falter. Her palms curled on his chest as she lifted herself up, then lowered herself down over him, every movement precise and deliberate. Her lashes fluttered, her breaths turning labored and heavy as she fought to maintain the same excruciatingly slow pace, her nails biting into his chest. 

Trevor’s feet curled tighter around his ankles, pulling his legs apart further and rendering him unable to move, restraining him and effectively trapping him between them. His careful hands swept Adrian’s hair over one shoulder, head lowering over his throat, and when he actually licked the sweat from the curve of his neck he moaned so loudly he was sure he’d probably just woken half the castle. 

Sypha’s slow, careful rocking turned to bouncing as she drove both of them towards a release he sensed was just out of reach. She was making soft little noises that were driving him crazy, but he still couldn’t move, trapped by Sypha’s thighs around his waist and her feet locked around the small of his back, by Trevor’s ankles hooked over his own and his legs around Adrian’s hips. 

All he could hear was the rush of his own blood in his ears and Sypha’s soft moans, and the rhythmic slap of skin against skin as she thrust against him again and again, not stopping. He felt Trevor’s fingers lace with his, drawing his hands back and pinning his wrists to the bed on either side of him, teeth biting gently at the curve between his neck and shoulder.

He didn’t resist, allowing them to restrain him, letting them pin him down, merely tipping his head back and feeling everything wash over him, both their touches and the sound of their heartbeats, the scent of their blood and the sound of their breath. He shut his eyes and let himself drown in it, in both of them, sinking into them willingly. 

Sypha’s hips thrust against him one last time and then they both broke at the same time, Adrian stiffening as he felt the coiling pressure at the base of his spine give way at last. It crested over him from his toes upward, slow hot waves of pure feeling rippling over his whole body. His mind went blissfully, wonderfully blank as he felt Sypha tighten around him, his climax slamming into him so hard that all he saw was white and gold exploding in his eyes. His back arched, his head craning backwards as his toes curled, his lips parting in a gasp. He might have said their names, he couldn’t tell; all he was aware of was Sypha’s voice groaning out his name and the scalding pleasure still tingling through his body, and Trevor’s steadiness behind him as he spun away into a fathomless cavern of ecstasy. 

He came to, eons later—or perhaps it was merely several minutes—lying sprawled across the sheets on his back, feeling limp and useless and utterly spent. He blinked his eyes open, his blurry vision coming into focus slowly. Sypha was half-sitting up beside him, grinning down at him as she swam into focus. 

“Hi,” she said, reaching out, her fingers brushing against his cheek.

He smiled up at her, turning his face to press a kiss to her fingers. “Hello.”

“Feeling better?”

“Much,” he said, leaning back to settle against the pillows. “I might fall asleep the moment I close my eyes.”

She laughed. “Well, good.” Then she turned, lips curling down into half a frown and half a pout, towards Trevor, who Adrian couldn’t see, blocked as he was by Sypha in the middle. She rolled over, offering Adrian an eyeful of her bare back as she did. “Wait, when did you...” He could hear her raised eyebrow, and her smirk.

“I, uh... had a free hand or two,” Trevor said, and Adrian hid his grin as he burrowed deeper into the pillows. “And you two were pretty much occupied, so, uh...” He cleared his throat and Sypha giggled, rolling over onto her back again. “Well, all right then. Less work for me.”

She tugged on Adrian’s hand, wriggling beneath him and pushing him forward until somehow he was squished between them on the mattress, Trevor throwing the blankets over all three of them. It was pleasantly warm, feeling both their body heat melding with his, the blankets trapping it and cocooning him in cozy, drowsy warmth. 

It took them a while to still entirely, took a while for hands to stop wandering and legs to stop slipping under and over each other and hips and shoulders to slot against each other before they settled, thoroughly tangled together. They traded soft, lazy kisses, all warm breath and contented hums and careless presses of lips. Adrian couldn’t tell who was where and whose arm or leg belonged to who, but at that moment he couldn’t care less. 

“I meant it when I said you were spoiling me, you know,” he mumbled, eyes already slipping closed. “Both of you.”

“Well, we love spoiling you,” Sypha said, her hair tickling his throat. “You deserve to be spoiled, Adrian Țepeș.”

“Yes, yes, thoroughly spoiled,” said Trevor. “Tremendously spoiled. Extraordinarily spoiled. Very, very spoiled.” He placed the softest of kisses on his cheek, the roughness of his stubble a stark but pleasing contrast to the little peck. “Now shut up and sleep.”

He laughed softly. “I love you,” was all he could manage to say.

“We love you, too,” Trevor said quietly, snuggling closer. “Now go to sleep.” 

He allowed himself one last contented sigh before he finally sank into the grateful darkness of sleep, and wrapped around Trevor and Sypha as he was, there was no place in the world he would rather be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lol a sex scene two chapters in. Also tenderness and love. Also Trephacard. Spoiling Adrian Tepes isn't a hobby it's a lifestyle. Netflix please hire me.


End file.
